


rocko's modern existential crisis

by ruruka



Category: Rocko's Modern Life
Genre: drug usage, takes place after static cling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29186892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	rocko's modern existential crisis

Rocko answers the door for two reasons. The first is for the sake of his ears who couldn’t take another fifteen minutes of banging. The second is that a peek out the front window shows him the box of cookies in Heffer’s hand.

“Hey, Rock,” his best friend smiles, plasters it on like magic, standing an inch straighter on his crackling front porch step. “Good thing you’re up. Mr. Bighead already threatened to turn me into a value meal if I didn’t stop knocking. Can I come in?”

Measly hand on the knob, Rocko stares forward til his forehead throbs. “Uh,” cracks his voice, face all pinched up to shake the ache away. “It’s actually not a good time for me right now, Heff, maybe come by la-”

“But my mom made you cookies,” Heffer interjects. The box transfers to Rocko’s unexpectant hands. “Chocolate chip. Mmm, delicious. Can I come in now?”

Blinking down at the gift, Rocko offers a peculiar glance. “Your mum only bakes two biscuits at a time..?”

Heffer, eyes blinking wide, swipes the crumbs from his mouth and steps forward to crush Rocko under an arm. “Yep, uhhh, you know how weird my mom can be. _Craaa-zy._ Hey, I think they’re airing old reruns of Battlestar Galactica on TV right now, can I come in and watch?”

“What the heck is- _OOF!”_

Like the natural prey he is, Rocko stumbles backward so far away from Heffer’s imposing steps closer that gravity knocks him on his ass; Spunky wanders out from behind his feet to sniff at him, to mutter and chew up the two cookies landed on the carpet. Rocko blinks the spirals from his eyes. Heffer stands in the middle of the living room, and it’s when a long whistle leaves him that Rocko staggers up toward him again, front door slamming off one hand. 

“Jeez, this place is a mess,” Heffer analyzes of the wrappers and napkins crumbled all across the floor, the splatters of nameless foods, the picture frame fallen from its hook last week that’s been on the to-do list to fix ever since. “Even worse than when me, you, and Filb all lived here together.”

Spunky sniffs his wet way along the rug as he walks toward them, though pauses to sneeze out the black cloud of dust his nostrils vacuumed up. Rocko shifts past him to grab the nearest blue button up off the floor and trade his robe for it. “It’s not so bad,” he promises, turning round again with fingers working buttons up to the throat. “Not as bad as the bedroom, at least. There’s still some floor left in here.”

“I can help you clean up while I’m here,” he offers. “It’ll probably make you feel better. Might even get you out of bed before noon. Or make you answer my calls.”

“That’s okay, Heff, thanks,” Rocko dismisses with a wave of the hand. Before sitting, he nudges a takeout container from the couch, hoard of sticky tissues following with it. “I feel fine, anyway. Just a little behind on me chores, is all, heh.” The TV remote fits into his hand. “How about that show you were telling me about, huh?”

“Do you even hear yourself when you talk?” Heffer asks, and Rocko knows he’s never been all that good at a poker face but never imagined anyone might _notice_ he’s been...y’know. Staying in pajamas six days out of the week. Only showering because it’s a place to cry. That kind of month long mood. 

In his seat he swallows, subtly, laying the remote back down yet staring at the black mirror of the screen anyway. “I’m telling you, Heffer, it’s not as big of a deal as you’re making it. So the house is a little messy. We just spent two decades spinning around outer space, I need a bit to get myself oriented again.” The fingers of his two hands tap against each other. “It’s just a little mess. And- and maybe I _am_ feeling a little bit screwed up, but that’s normal, isn’t it? I just finished wasting twenty years of my life...after wasting the first twenty, too.” Glazed eyes don’t twitch, don’t move a speck away from the warped reflection of himself in his box television. “Don’t you or Filburt ever think about that? We were stagnant all that time, just... _up there!_ Doing nothing. Not working, not driving, not even aging! I just spent _twenty years_ in space, and I’m _still_ not old enough to buy alcohol on my own.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Heffer mutters within placing himself on the second couch cushion, hands folded solemnly in the lap. “Well, at least we have Rachel for a weed plug.” 

Sudden as a sharp pain, Rocko grabs at his own yelping mouth. “Rachel! Blazes! It must be over a week since I’ve talked to her.”

“Filburt’s twenty-one, we’d have him, too, if he weren’t such a big baby about everything,” Heffer goes deafly on. “But, eh, look on the brightside, Rock. It’ll be my birthday soon. What’dya get me, by the way?”

“She likes to do the- the word talking, on the screen.” Rocko nibbles a fingernail. “I can never keep up with it. I already don’t know what I’m doing, and she types so fast!”

“Are you talking _texting?”_ Heffer blinks, then from his mouth quavers a weightless laugh. “Come on, Rocko, you’ve gotta adapt. Even _Spunky_ knows how to use a cell phone.”

“I know. You showed me his, um, Tim Tam videos. They were very nice.”

Groaning in his throat, Heffer’s eyes roll high. “It’s called _TikTok,_ boomer.”

“ _Boomah?”_ Rocko glances dolefully at his hands. “Is that a new swear word?”

Heffer shakes his head with both hands clutching it. “Rocko, you’re never gonna learn to adjust to your new life if you’re too scared to even _try.”_

“I _am_ trying!” he insists. “Just-Just a few weeks ago, I drank an iced coffee.”

“You hate coffee.”

“But I _tried_ it.”

“Because Rachel prob’ly made you.”

His mouth purses in on itself before all his pokey little teeth poke back out and agitation points his brows. “Are you going to be proud of me, or not?”

“Of course I’m proud of you, Rocko! Look, you got dressed today!” A finger points toward the front of his shirt where half the buttons are crossed into the wrong holes. Rocko folds his arms to cover it. “But I think a little exposure therapy might be good for you. Let me show you all the _amaaazing thiiings_ the twenty first century has to offer.”

Rocko hasn’t the time to politely decline or wail and plead for mercy or even to decide which he’d’ve done. Rocko, in his mind, hasn’t any time at all. None to squander like he’s been doing the last weeks and all the rest of them. Rocko hasn’t any time at all. 

Or maybe just a few extra minutes. At least a half hour, alright, he’s got _at least_ a free half hour to humor Heffer’s definition of amazing things being compact pocket drugs and fast food delivered right to the front door ( _WOW!_ That one got him. He thinks of all the new technology he’s witnessed, something like that is really the most inventive, and he’d’ve gained far more than ten pounds in the last month had he known of it any sooner). 

“It’s really just...pot? All liquid like that?” In delicate fingers, he examines the slim silver pen, oil cartridge screwed in the top where his eye trains. “How do they do that?”

“It’s called _vaping,_ Rocko. Everybody does it. Peter’s the one who introduced me, they gave me one of their cartridge flavors to try the other day.” 

“Is it legal?”

“Sure, sure,” Heffer assures, feet propped on the coffee table, hand stuffed inside the last bag of chips in the house. “Just don’t try to cross state lines with it.” Both their attentions flick up to the bang at the front door. “That must be the DoorDash. Go ahead, Rocko. Expose yourself.”

Pink heat crowds underneath his blinking eyes. “What’s that now?”

Chewing half a mouthful, Heffer murmurs, “Exposure therapy, remember?”

“Oh, um, sure. I’ll get the door.” He hops from his seat and fidgets with both hands, but a fine breath in lulls him, composes him, enough to glance down and recall the vape in his sweaty grasp and the first thing Heffer told him about it earlier: _just press the button and suck, you like sucking, don’t you?_

Rocko presses the button and sucks. By the time he reaches the front entry, he’s gagging on all things anxious, all things shock once he throws the door open and sees their delivery boy, all things liquified marijuana choking up from his throat in a harsh cloud of smoke between them. “F-Filburt? You’re a- _ahem_ -delivery driver- _AHACK_ -now?”

On the porch step, Filburt adjusts the placement of his feet, just a touch, thrusts forward the paper bag in his hand, bottom dripping with twenty first century grease. “No, I’m no driver. I find that cars carry with them an unnecessary risk of violence and danger. I take my scooter.” His thumb jerks over a shoulder to the purple moped parked at the curb. Rocko blinks back to reality when his voice whines again, “Anyways, here’s your food. Don’t forget to tip. I got a family to provide for, ya know.”

In the crinkling process of taking the bag of Chokey Chicken, Rocko’s gaze flits behind him to a raucous, “Hey, is that Filburt?” from the sofa.

“Heffer?” Filburt sneers. “You guys are hanging out without me? I bet you didn’t even order me any chicken.”

“Uh, sorry, Filb, why don’t you-” Rocko starts, but flattens back against the door when Filburt pushes past him. “...come in and hang out.” 

A wispy sigh creaks from him as he latches the door again, turns back just in time to place the food on the coffee table and watch Filburt steal his seat on the couch. “It looks good in here, Rocko. Could you turn the thermostat up a smidgen, though? My skin starts to dry out when I’m cold.”

“Hey, how’re your new glasses, Filb?” Heffer asks, leaning to pry their lunch order open. 

Filburt, at the mention of them, adjusts his lenses. “They’re alright. I think my old ones worked better, but Hutch said these are more handsome. Why do you ask?”

Just in front of the television, Spunky chases a sentient gym sock, slobbering and barking the whole way. Heffer hums to himself, says, “No reason,” and stuffs a drumstick in his mouth. The bone pulls away clean. 

Rocko finishes righting his buttons just when he sits himself down on the floor beside the couch. “I’m glad you guys are over today. I guess I didn’t realize I’ve been a little, uh, _scattered_ lately.”

“I didn’t notice anything different,” Filburt says. “You’re always like that. You get anxious about the mailman coming.”

“No, no, you got it all wrong,” Heffer chews. “Our Rocko’s a starving artist.”

“Oh,” says Filburt, turning to offer the chicken thigh in his hand. “Here, eat something, then.”

“Um,” Rocko swallows, though doesn’t refuse the gift of meat proffered out his way, takes it in two tentative hands and continues on sitting there. “I think what Heffer means is that I’ve been having some trouble figuring out this strange new world we’ve been thrown into. Everyone else seems so... _fine_ with it _,_ even you two! I just feel like I’m running out of time, and with nothing to show for it. I can’t even begin to understand all the new stuff going on around here.”

“It’s easy! Just embrace it!” Heffer shouts. “Technology is _cooool.”_

“Yeah, 2019 is great. I can only imagine what next year will be like,” Filburt says, only makes Rocko’s stomach ache with more dirty uncertainty. “They’ll probably invent something to get the toast out of the toaster without electrocuting yourself.”

“Or there’ll be a global apocalypse, infecting everyone you know and love with a deadly virus that turns them all into crazy robotic zombies that _feast_ on your brain matter! And they’ll scoop your eyeballs out with plastic sporks, ‘cause there’ll be no spoons left! A worldwide spoon shortage! It’ll be-!”

“Heffer, I thought we were supposed to be helping him feel less afraid.” Heavy brows set in vexation above Filburt’s squinting gaze. Gradually, his face relaxes again to glance at their third. “Don’t listen to him, Rocko. There’ll be plenty of spoons.”

Curled up against himself, Rocko doesn’t meet any eye that tries for his. Lip trembling, he reminds himself that breathing is good, yes, breathing, just the same as thinking and reasoning. He lifts a hand from where it grips round his knees when a damp nose snuffles at it. That’s all it takes him to relax. Spunky wiggles up into his lap, tail thumping, and Rocko pets him in long, soft strokes. Nothing’s much different, if he truly thinks about it. He’s got his house, his friends, and his dog. What’s more to need? A college degree to ‘make something of himself’? Enough money to fill his gas tank _and_ eat dinner in the same day? Someone to love him unconditionally and sleep beside him at night and care for him in his darkest hours of need? Nope. None of that arbitrary junk matters in the twenty first century. “Good,” he at last unsticks his mouth from itself to pipe. “I wouldn’t know what to eat cereal with, otherwise.”

“Uh, with milk?” Filburt glances to Heffer, back to Rocko with a shrug. “Duh.”

“Yeah, Rock, I think we need to work on your critical thinking skills some more.” Heffer fists a mess of chicken skin into his mouth. “Let’s see what’s on TV.”

A weighted exhale stays trapped in the boundary of his mouth. He’s got his house and his dog. 

“I have my Nintendo Twitch on me,” Filburt says. The top of his shell unhinges for him to dig a hand inside and retrieve a handheld console with more screen and less buttons than Rocko’s ever seen, though he supposes that’s with the trend of modern tech. An eyelid shivers. Filburt goes on, “We can hook it up to the television and play Stupid Plumber Bros 15.”

“Fifteen?!” Rocko yelps. “Last I knew there were only two of them out.”

“Pf. _Yeah_ , in the _nineties,”_ Heffer tells him. “Compared to those old games, the graphics and frame rate of the new ones will probably give you a heart attack!”

“What in the hell is a frame rate?”

“Oh, fishsticks,” thumbs in between their _titillating_ conversation, and in tandem they look toward Filburt’s newly grave voice. “I don’t think I can plug the console into this old TV. There’s no HDMI input.”

“Can’t you just put it in with the AV cords?”

“No, dummy, this isn’t 1852.”

“Jeez, sorry, I thought you might have a cable adapter, or something. Maybe a way to project the video feed onto the TV via screen mirroring, or...or something.”

“Would somebody mind telling me what anyone in here is talking about?” Rocko snaps. His lap is left cold when Spunky crawls off toward the dark stink of the kitchen. 

Chewing slow handfuls of fries, Heffer nods toward the box television set up on the floor in front of them. “Your TV’s, like, a million years old.”

“Yeah,” Filburt nods. “You should really consider getting a new one.”

Perhaps it needn’t be said how quickly that sends Rocko to his feet, how tightly shake his fists on either side of him. It’s something like an instinctual reaction to an iron shoe heel pressing and pressing and pressing and pressing him down into the rug for the last twenty years in space and twenty on earth that equal each other _(somefuckinghow!)_ , a sort of retribution to the gods who’re testing him, a final bite on the lit head of a match just before his fingertips can burn. “No,” he insists, “No way, no how, am I _ever_ getting a new TV. There’s nothing wrong with the old one, it still turns on and plays movies. It’s even got a VCR built right into it! It’s the pinnacle of technology! And you expect me to throw that all away, just to buy some fancy billion-dollar flat screen? How can they say they’re better when they’re all flat like that? Where do all the cables and wires and cartoon shows go? There’s no bloody room for all that in a TV that’s as thin as a phonebook page!”

“Who’s gonna tell him that phonebooks don’t exist anymore?” Filburt murmurs to his side, and Heffer, eyes just as wide and focused on the blazing red display, whispers back, “Not it.”

“And _furthermore!_ Who even decided that _newer_ automatically means _better?_ Are _people_ better now, just because they’re newer? That’s pretty disrespectful to my mum and granny, if you ask me!” Hands wringing, Rocko paces the floor with no target for his vociferating in sight. “Well, I say that if something’s broke, don’t fix it- _I mean!_ If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! And I don’t think my TV is very broke, so therefore, it shouldn’t need _any sort_ of fixing. There’s no need for all this modernized rubbish! I don’t want any new video games or telephones or credit cards with a microchip in them! And I most certainly do _not_ want a new TV, so I will not under any circumstances be _getting_ a new TV, because I don’t _need_ a new TV, and everybody in the world with their great big nice new gadgets should just piss off and quit bothering me, because I do not! _want! a new! TELEVISION!”_

Breaths roll from him in hot huffs. Heffer and Filburt leave the air sans any feedback.

From the corner of the room, the first to speak up is Spunky with his raspy little bark just before toddling back into the den, tail high and wagging. 

“...Well, _gee,_ Rocko,” Heffer tries, wetting his mouth. “You don’t have to yell.”

“Yeah, if you don’t want a new TV, that’s okay.” In one blink, Rocko’s bones begin to melt as he watches the game console flick _on_ in Filburt’s hands. “These are portable, too.”

The console tosses back with a loud slam of his shell hatch again, and Rocko can do nothing but stand in his place and poke his fingertips together, shuffle his feet, look anywhere but at their incessant eyes. “Oh, um, heh heh, that’s...uh-”

“Ooh, I got a text,” Heffer suddenly chimes, digs his mobile phone from a pocket to peer at the lit-up screen. A grin casts itself across his face. “It’s from Rachel.”

“Rachel?” Rocko blinks, tail lifted high behind him. “Did- Did she mention me at all?”

“Yeah, lookit, she said _hey_ with three _e_ ’s.”

“Oh, boy,” Filburt says flatly. “When a woman starts adding extra vowels to words, it means she’s interested in pursuing carnal relations.”

“R…” Rocko swallows, flushed all the way up the neck. “Really? You think so? Push over, Heff, I wanna see what else she said.”

He’ll get to cleaning in the next few days. He’s handled worse than a few new doohickies in his life, yeah, it’s fine. What was he even complaining about? Pah, he’s already forgotten it. 


End file.
